TMF updates NGOSS

Maybe for its 15th anniversary party this Fall, the TeleManagement Forum can get Sade to sing “Lean Operator.” Barring that, the group will no doubt (no, not the midriff-baring Gwen Stefani’s No Doubt) settle for trumpeting the latest release of its lean operator enabler, NGOSS, which it announced this week. The New Generation Operations Systems and Software Release 3.5 is a ready-to-implement set of specifications, models and guidelines for business process mapping and creation of systems that enable process automation.  NGOSS 3.5 delivers substantial extensions to the eTOM (Enhanced Telecom Operations Map) developed by Forum member companies over the past 15 months.  It also contains significant enhancements to the SID (Shared Information and Data) Model and new additions and updates to the NGOSS architecture. The new version of the eTOM will include a deepening of business process decompositions across the major operational areas, example process flows, extensions to support external process business-to-business interaction, descriptions of the points of contact and linkages between eTOM and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), as well as linkage with SID. The TMF’s SID also sports new features such as the establishment of relationships between the basic models in the Business View (customer, product, service and resource) and web-based UML models and a description of the associations between the SID business entities and the eTOM business processes.